Grimrock

Some advice from a gaming veteran of 25 years experience.

NOTE! These are designed for the complete beginner/those new to First Person RPGs (apologies if any have been mentioned).

Evasion in LoG is more important than armour - better to avoid getting hit at all. (edit: early on in the game that is...don't chuck good armour!)

If you would like a bit more response in avoiding enemies, try turning down all the graphics options to low for a while (or get a better video card or max out the RAM )

Always select and keep 'armed' an offensive spell along with a reach weapon like a spear or stack of missiles in the other hand. In non combat moments keep a fireball loaded in the torpedo tube. Fire magic here is good to concentrate on, (edit: as is fire resistance)

Group ammo refills close to your characters hand on your inventory, and chuckable objects on the left side of the inv. Time & Motion. Try and arrange stuff that minimises the distance between ammo refills or torch/weapon hand swops...it might seem like a fraction of an inch but every little helps.

Get a good quality mousemat - yes it makes a difference
Up your mouse response slider to max/get a higher resolution mouse (and try and get used to it).
Don't play with a trackball or trackpad, unless you want your party to die more than they should!

Travel as light as poss. Encumbrance means you consume food faster. Try and eat heavier food first.

You can chuck spent torches at nme as ammo, and other objects: scrolls, gems and whatnot.
Everytime you pick up an info scroll, throw away a heavier object such as a spent torch

Save after every enemy despatched without fail.
Save BEFORE entering ANY room with pressure plates unless you like to live dangerously
Save before falling down a trap door (some have goodies at the bottom and or nme! )
Save before pulling a lever/pressing a button without an obvious gate/door next to it - a wall may open close by to reveal a surprise nme that will bash your heads in for your foolishness.

Yes, saving interrupts the action...but slow & steady win the race - think of each save as a basecamp and insurance policy against fatal mistakes or messing up. How many times have we ALL saved too far back in a game only to go through all that folderol AGAIN! After the 20th time it gets old fast. Saving close to a screw up point makes trying again repeatedly much less wearisome.

If you can't solve something, sleep on it and come back to it the next day, particularly those "too hard" puzzles that make you throw your hands up in frustration at.

Soften nme up from a distance with missiles first.

Do not allow nme to flank you.

jontycampbell wrote:Evasion is more important than armour - better to avoid getting hit at all.

All good, but this one is kinda a lie. High protection is better than Evasion. Evasion just means harder to hit. But with no protection. Then when you do get hit, you get hit hard and die easily. Especially against the higher enemies. High protection, usually from heavy armor, and you can live through everything except the ending boss. (since he just one hits you, no chance to dodge.)

It's really up to the players how they want to play, but truly the "20% chance to get hit, but killed if hit" is not better than "40% change to get hit, lose only like 5-10hp if hit" I know this from experience, playing a full 4 rogue party. The ones with Armor, and not Evasion always live longer.

Jirodyne wrote:

jontycampbell wrote:Evasion is more important than armour - better to avoid getting hit at all.

All good, but this one is kinda a lie. High protection is better than Evasion. Evasion just means harder to hit. But with no protection. Then when you do get hit, you get hit hard and die easily. Especially against the higher enemies. High protection, usually from heavy armor, and you can live through everything except the ending boss. (since he just one hits you, no chance to dodge.)

It's really up to the players how they want to play, but truly the "20% chance to get hit, but killed if hit" is not better than "40% change to get hit, lose only like 5-10hp if hit" I know this from experience, playing a full 4 rogue party. The ones with Armor, and not Evasion always live longer.

Interesting - I never thought of that. You think a 50/50 approach to evasion/armour is better?

Moreover, does armour get more important the deeper the party progresses or...?

jontycampbell wrote:Moreover, does armour get more important the deeper the party progresses or...?

I think it does, cause while most enemies in the game are seen for only a short while, the flame guardian are seen first in floor 6, and become the normal enemy for every floor from 7 to 12. And since their only attack is a fireball spell, that auto damages everyone in the party at once... Without high protection to migrate the damage (especially helps with a fire mage that has Fire protection spell and ability.), your rogues and mages are going to die often if you take even a few hits, meanwhile your warriors will lose very little HP and can easily run back to a nearby crystal and heal everything up. I know my first run in with them, 1 hit instantly killed my mage, and the second hit killed my rogue.

Good tips!

jontycampbell wrote: Save after every enemy despatched without fail.
Save BEFORE entering ANY room with pressure plates unless you like to live dangerously
Save before falling down a trap door (some have goodies at the bottom and or nme! )
Save before pulling a lever/pressing a button without an obvious gate/door next to it - a wall may open close by to reveal a surprise nme that will bash your heads in for your foolishness.

Yes, saving interrupts the action...but slow & steady win the race - think of each save as a basecamp and insurance policy against fatal mistakes or messing up. How many times have we ALL saved too far back in a game only to go through all that folderol AGAIN! After the 20th time it gets old fast. Saving close to a screw up point makes trying again repeatedly much less wearisome.

And specifically use different save slots! I've read of several people who just used quicksave and then were unable to return to an earlier point as they over wrote everything, meaning a restart...

Daniel.

Jirodyne wrote:

jontycampbell wrote:Evasion is more important than armour - better to avoid getting hit at all.

All good, but this one is kinda a lie. High protection is better than Evasion. Evasion just means harder to hit. But with no protection. Then when you do get hit, you get hit hard and die easily. Especially against the higher enemies. High protection, usually from heavy armor, and you can live through everything except the ending boss. (since he just one hits you, no chance to dodge.)

It's really up to the players how they want to play, but truly the "20% chance to get hit, but killed if hit" is not better than "40% change to get hit, lose only like 5-10hp if hit" I know this from experience, playing a full 4 rogue party. The ones with Armor, and not Evasion always live longer.

Sorry, but i stick with the Evasion-thing. I tried both, and in my experience, evasion is much, much mightier than protection. To have a real benfit from protection, you need really high protection-values, and even then you have no guarantee for low hits, the range of the inflicted damagepoints is just to high.
even a warrior with full-evasion-equipment is nearly invulnerable to melee-hits (a rogue with doubled evasion is).
problem is, there is just one set of evasion-armor (lurker-set), so you just can decide if you mix both tanks with protection/evasion-gear, or build up one evasion, and one warrior-tank.
with a warrior/rogue-frontrow, everything beside a full-evasion-rogue is bullshit, in a warrior/warrior-frontrow you can choose, but specializing is mostly better.

Homek wrote:

Jirodyne wrote:

jontycampbell wrote:Evasion is more important than armour - better to avoid getting hit at all.

All good, but this one is kinda a lie. High protection is better than Evasion. Evasion just means harder to hit. But with no protection. Then when you do get hit, you get hit hard and die easily. Especially against the higher enemies. High protection, usually from heavy armor, and you can live through everything except the ending boss. (since he just one hits you, no chance to dodge.)

It's really up to the players how they want to play, but truly the "20% chance to get hit, but killed if hit" is not better than "40% change to get hit, lose only like 5-10hp if hit" I know this from experience, playing a full 4 rogue party. The ones with Armor, and not Evasion always live longer.

Sorry, but i stick with the Evasion-thing. I tried both, and in my experience, evasion is much, much mightier than protection. To have a real benfit from protection, you need really high protection-values, and even then you have no guarantee for low hits, the range of the inflicted damagepoints is just to high.
even a warrior with full-evasion-equipment is nearly invulnerable to melee-hits (a rogue with doubled evasion is).
problem is, there is just one set of evasion-armor (lurker-set), so you just can decide if you mix both tanks with protection/evasion-gear, or build up one evasion, and one warrior-tank.
with a warrior/rogue-frontrow, everything beside a full-evasion-rogue is bullshit, in a warrior/warrior-frontrow you can choose, but specializing is mostly better.

OK...but is equipping good armour anyway a good thing anyway rather than leave it?

jontycampbell wrote:OK...but is equipping good armour anyway a good thing anyway rather than leave it?

Of course it is, if you're proficient with the weapon.

Evasion sadly is better than protection in this game, but that doesn't make protection entirely useless. If you can take protection at the cost of nothing, go ahead and take it!